The mop haired British entrepreneur soon to become an official part of China's first family

When 36-year-old Daniel Foa needed to impress a group of Chinese and Western
chief executives, he simply booked the one dinner spot in Beijing that no
outsider could ever access: The Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square.

By mid-November, Mr Foa, whose middle-class parents live in Cheltenham, will officially be part of China’s first family.Photo: Twitter

Tom Phillips in Shanghai, Malcolm Moore in Beijing and Sam Marsden

10:00PM GMT 28 Oct 2012

The Great Hall is the official hub of Chinese politics; in a few weeks time the Communist party will unveil a new line-up of leaders underneath its shimmering chandeliers and intricately painted ceilings.

But then the mop-haired British entrepreneur may now be the best-connected foreigner in China.

By mid-November, Mr Foa, whose middle-class parents live in Cheltenham, will officially be part of China’s first family.

His wife, and the mother of his child, is Hiu Ng, the niece of Xi Jinping, China’s next paramount leader.

One of the guests at the private dinner, which took place after a sustainability awards ceremony organised by Mr Foa and his wife, recalled being whisked through the front entrance of the Great Hall underneath the giant blood-red badge of the People’s Republic.

In a ground-floor dining room, the guests, who included Maurice Strong, 83, a former under-secretary general of the United Nations, Martin Bloom, the chairman of the solar company Renesola, and Yang Guomeng, the chief executive of TOM, a Chinese communications company, were toasted by the couple for their support and sponsorship.

“Both of them were very professional. They are not just socialites. She got the room, and she seemed to be in control and he was supporting her. She is smart at business, and he seems to be too,” said the guest.

The opulent banquet came just ten years after Mr Foa first arrived in Shanghai as a 23-year-old Economics graduate with little or no spoken Chinese.

Back then, he shared a modest apartment in a bright pink building called the May Fair Tower with two friends.

“We were all just sort of buccaneers showing up in a very different China,” said a friend from the time. “China was an escape. It was good times.”

Born in Wimbledon, Mr Foa went through several schools, including Donhead, whose motto is “Semper Magis” or “Always More”. He sat his A-levels at Esher college in Surrey and went on to Portsmouth university.

According to his Friends Reunited profile, which was deleted this week, he did a ski season after graduation and worked for a while in a dot com venture.

Then he set off for China, where he landed jobs with some of the multinational companies looking to break into the world’s second-largest economy.

Those who knew him in the early years say he was quickly seduced by Shanghai, frequenting bars, nightclubs and themed parties for young and affluent expats. He became the captain of a local football team, the Virgin Red Stars.

“There was a little gang of them who liked going to champagne brunches and playing tennis,” said one source who met him on a number of occasions.

“I would not say they were playboys but they liked going out every night for a drink.” Others said he only stood out because of his unusual name and “ill-fitting jackets”.

“I have no negative opinions about him at all. But I did not consider him likely to be able to penetrate China to the extent that he has. How does a guy like that make contact with the niece of Xi Jinping?” said one former member of Shanghai’s expat community

The answer, according to another friend who knows the couple, is that they moved in the same expat circles.

“She studied abroad and her English is so good she could pass for a foreigner, and she spent more time in the expat scene than the Chinese scene,” he said.

Until recently, few friends were even aware that Mrs Ng is the daughter of Xi Jinping’s younger sister, Xi Qianping, a low-profile businesswoman who lives in Australia.

“I knew she was well-connected, but I did not know exactly how well-connected,” said one.

Now that her identity is public, and with her uncle about to become president, Mr Foa’s position has become highly sensitive.

He declined to be interviewed for this story and none of his friends agreed to be named. His parents, Marco Foa and Mila Hurst, who have separated, also declined to comment.

“I’m very busy,” said his father from his modest £250,000 terraced house close to Cheltenham racecourse.

In Shanghai, Mr Foa worked for IBM, helping to set up a new trading platform for the stock exchange, and then became a director of Chinawire, helping to broker deals between Chinese and Western firms.

In 2005 he swapped Shanghai for China’s capital, moving north to help manage the Chinese research and development lab of Nortel, the telecommunications company.

Friends in Beijing say the couple now live in a residential suburb of the capital called Shunyi and recently had a child.

“They live quite a modest life. They do not appear to be hugely rich and he was always generally careful about money,” one friend said.

For the last five years, the couple have run a series of businesses focusing on charity and sustainability.

One raises money for Chinese charities over the internet. Another invests money in green energy and climate-related fields. They have worked with the Clinton Foundation and Mr Foa has appeared with the former US president.

Mr Foa has said his wife, who holds a Master of Science degree in Sustainable Development from University College London, has devoted her career to helping China’s poor.

“[She says] this is what I want to do, this my mission, these are my people and this is what I have to be doing with my life at this point in time to make the change happen,” he told a conference in 2009.

But marrying into one of China’s most powerful families comes with strings attached.

“You will not find many people who will say a bad word about him,” said one friend in Beijing. “But it is very difficult to get a cup of coffee with him because he is under constant scrutiny from the family.”

“These Red families are the aristocracy of China,” said another. “They will have done their due diligence on him, he will have signed the contract and he is now living that closed and highly controlled existence. Would you do it? I would not.”